Julian Assange Isn't a Transparency Crusader, And I'm Not Surprised

Mon, 05/07/2012 - 03:18 EDT - Forbes.com - Top Stories

With the launch of ??The World Tomorrow talk-show on??Russia Today TV network ? the one that was founded upon ?s political will to broadcast Russian view on current world affairs ? has triggered a massive wave of criticism. Journalistically, there is indeed nothing wrong with his interviewing manner, and he is obviously free to invite ...

Related

In January 2011, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange chose Scottish novelist and non-fiction author Andrew O'Hagan to 'ghostwrite' his autobiography/manifesto. The project failed spectacularly over the next five months.

Julian Assange?s new show ?The World Tomorrow? recently debuted on Russia Today (RT) and featured a roughly 30 minute discussion with Hassan Nasrallah. Considering that the reclusive leader of Hezbollah hadn?t given an interview to the Western media in almost 6 full years (i.e. several lifetimes in the media universe) it would at least appear ...

It's T-minus four days until Julian Assange's new talk show debuts on Russia Today, and while no one's saying who the first guest will be, one interesting detail has come to light: The show's theme music was written by Sri Lankan hip hop star M.I.A.

In the seven years since he founded WikiLeaks, Julian Assange's relationships with a number of his former collaborators and supporters have broken down, with each side variously claiming broken promises or bad faith on the part of the other.

How foolish of me it was to question whether Wikileaks founder Julian Assange really had a deal to distribute his new talk show to hundreds of millions of viewers. It turns out he does: with Russia Today, the English-language news network sponsored by the Russian government.
That's right: Assange, self-style foe of government secrets and conspiracies of the powerful, is going to be a star on a TV network backed by the Kremlin.

A Russian state television channel said Wednesday that it would exclusively air a television chat show hosted by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.RT, formerly known as Russia Today, an English language channel funded by the Russian government, said in a statement that Assange "is launching his own talkshow, to be broadcast exclusively on RT."Assange had announced the show on Tuesday on the WikiLeaks website saying that it had licensing commitments covering more than 600 million viewers across cable, satellite and terrestrial networks.

ALLOW me to also respond to my colleague's post defending the latest document-dump by WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, in which he writesOrganisations such as WikiLeaks, which are philosophically opposed to state secrecy and which operate as much as is possible outside the global nation-state system, may be the best we can hope for in the way of promoting the climate of transparency and accountability necessary for authentically liberal democracy.